As a border community, we in Osoyoos have many close ties with our friends and neighbours (should that be neighbors?) across the line.
Our children often participate together in sports events or dance. Adult clubs like Rotary have districts that span the border.
Many Osoyoos residents cross the border to do a little shopping or buy gas, and many from the U.S. come here to stretch their dollars or participate in our events.
Some of us have families living on both sides of the border and some of us are dual citizens. Here we even share a common lake.
Some small businesses take parcels down to Oroville to mail them to U.S. customers and some consumers pick up online purchases at one of the parcel holding businesses there.
We share a common language, many common values and a similar culture.
Every now and then, however, an event comes along to remind us of how different we sometimes are from our American cousins.
We’ve been reminded of those differences in particular when the U.S. has engaged in certain miliary debacles that Canadians generally didn’t approve of – the long involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and ’70s and the 2003 invasion of Iraq are two obvious examples.
Perhaps our biggest difference is politics. For starters, the Canadian parliamentary system is based on the Westminster parliamentary system of the United Kingdom. It has very little in common with the U.S. republican form of government, except that both are democratically elected.
Our political cultures are very different as well. This is partly because Canadian election spending laws severely limit the power of those with money to buy electoral outcomes.
Although B.C. politics can be polarized, Canadians generally tend to be more moderate than extreme. Polls have found that U.S. President Barack Obama enjoys much greater popularity in Canada than he does in his own country.
Conversely, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is far more unpopular on this side of the border.
Indeed, the Trump phenomenon has sent waves of disbelief and shock across Canada and much of the world.
Every so often, the United States flirts with demagogues. Until Trump came along, one of the worst examples was Senator Joe McCarthy, who rose to popularity in the 1950s by conducting witchhunts against political enemies he branded as “reds,” whether they were communist or not.
That’s not to suggest we’re better. The late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford appealed to the same kind of misguided populism.
But at the national level, our system of party discipline – despite its flaws – makes it much harder for lone demagogues like Trump to rise to the surface.
Senator McCarthy eventually unraveled, and in recent weeks there are signs that Donald Trump is doing the same. Hopefully enough Americans will come to their senses before the Nov. 8 presidential election.
Some have suggested in jest that if Trump becomes president, we should build a wall on our southern border and make him pay.
But our two countries have too much in common and too many ties on this shared continent to let one deranged politician spoil the friendships we’ve developed over centuries.
